FYI-- After some concerns were raised about the indefinite protection or semi-protection of some high-profile articles, I decided unprotect some that had been protected for a long time. (I also created a recent change list and requested the help of a few other editors to help me watch the pages. A list of pages I unprotected or set end-dates for is available at [[User:Fang Aili/sandbox2]].)
All articles listed below were unprotected by me around March 29. Here is a report on what has happened since. All re-semi-protected articles were protected in response to IP vandalism, unless otherwise specified.
==Countries and continents== *France - Indef semi-protected on April 1. *Mexico - Re-semi-protected, March 31. (expires April 14) *Iraq - Re-semi-protected, April 4. (expires April 14) *England - Re-semi-protected, April 3. (expires April 17) *Europe - Still unprotected. Target of much vandalism, but also constructive edits by IPs. *Africa - Re-SP'd April 2. Expires April 7. *Australia - Much anon vandalism. Re-SP'd on April 3, expires April 24. *People's Republic of China - Still unprotected. Some vandalism. (I kept page move protection.)
==People== *Ayn Rand - Still unprotected. Some anon vandalism. *Bill Cosby - Semi-protected again by myself after vandals claimed Cobsy was dead, expires April 16. *Benito Mussolini - Still unprotected. Some anon vandalism.
==Planets== *Earth - Still unprotected. Fairly heavy IP vandalism. *Sun - Re-SP'd on April 2, expires April 7. *Mars - Re-SP'd on April 5, expires May 17.
==Other== *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - This has gone through many edits lately, as can be expected. It was unprotected March 28, re-protected the next day, and unprotected March 31. *Black Death - A suprising target of much anon vandalism, semi-protected again by myself, expires April 12. *Buddhism - Still unprotected. Some IP vandalism. *Aztec - Still unprotected. Minor IP vandalism. *Baibars - Still unprotected. No vandalism. *Amish - Still unprotected. Minor IP vandalism. At least one instance of a constructive IP edit. *History of Croatia - Still unprotected. No edits since I unprotected it.
==Analysis== 1. Of this group, countries were most likely to be re-protected.
2. With some articles, it seems our choices are: 1)Constantly monitor, and revert often, or 2)Semi-protect and still monitor for (perhaps less frequent) vandalism from registered users. [[England]], for example, was still getting vandalized even while semi-protected.
3. We may just have to accept that some articles will be indefinitely semi-protected, or will go through cycles of one-week-unprotected, several-weeks-protected.
Take the information for what you will. I am not sure I accomplished anything other than reasserting what we already know. But it was an interesting experiment.
Erica User:Fang Aili